Hello, Could I pick your brains and ask you to identify a frame that was bought on ebay, This frame has no head badge or decals, and there's no serial number stamps anywhere !! All I have to go on is the crown detailing on the front fork. Thank you for any help that I receive. Steve.

I had to solve the same riddle after I bought an Italian-made Belgian bike on ebay in 2012. It took me over one year to sort it out. I've finally come to the conclusion that these frames were produced by an Italian manufacturer called Tecnotelai, mostly for bike shops who then branded them with their own labels.I'm actually in a bit of a hurry and can't instantly find the relevant pictures on my notebook but I promise I will bring you photos to prove my theory on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Sorry, I still haven't got much time, nor have I found all the pics I had saved on my nb. But as I want to keep my promise, let's see what we already have.It all started when I bought that bike.http://fotos.rennrad-news.de/s/14199(The pics are from a friend I finally sold it to)It is labelled Vida Sport (a Belgian bike shop) and has two very particular features, this rare Columbus tubing sticker

and the crown on the fork crown which represents the riddle to solve. As you can see, there's another sticker on the frame reading "Made in Italy" and the lugs have exactly the same cut-outs as on your frame.

Looking things up on the internet, I didn't find any satisfying solution, though there's threads dealing with the problem. This one for example:http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.ph ... fork-crownIt is true that Losa, Monark, Mercier and surely others used crowns but they were all different. And then, putting a crown on the crown seems a rather obvious thing to do.Months later I found this frame on ebay.it:

It is labelled Motta – nothing to do with Gianni Motta but, as I suppose, just another bike shop, this time Italian. Same crown, same cut-outs, but no obvious connection to 2T aka Tecnotelai nor to any other manufacturer on the seller's pictures. Fortunately, the frame was bought by a member of a German vintage bike forum I know and looking closely at his new purchase, look what he found on the inner side of the fork:

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(The 2T symbol)

And now comes the point where I have to shorten things because I definitely need to go and have a drink to celebrate my Napoli's CL victory over Dortmund.

Does the crown on the fork crown really have anything to do with 2T?Yes, it does.

Over the months, I found more evidence and frames or complete bikes with the crown in question, though they often had different lugs, in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and UK. Of the one's that were still labelled, I could trace some back to bike shops. None had decals of another proper manufacturer.

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